


Strangers Like Me

by ALWrites



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tarzan Fusion, Crack, Fluff, M/M, Minor references to sex and drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 15:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11970306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALWrites/pseuds/ALWrites
Summary: Botanist Byun Baekhyun discovers that there’s more to the African jungle than what meets the microscope.





	Strangers Like Me

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: There are probably a thousand inaccuracies in this and unfortunately I didn’t have time to get it proofread by my beta but I just want to thank L (a.k.a Dr. Butt Saver) for giving this a read for me and telling me that my efforts were paying off! I hope everyone who reads enjoys this fic! It was definitely an interesting one to write xD I know it's not as good as some of my other stories but oh wells, I tried (*´∀`*) This is in the queue for some serious editing hahaha~ ♥
> 
> If you enjoy this, please leave a comment!♥  
> ~Amy(ᵔᴥᵔ)
> 
>  

 

 

[(Link to revised version on AFF)](http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/1296309/strangers-like-me-fluff-baekyeol-chanbaek-xingdae)

 

 

The smell of car fumes seems so out of place in the depths of the jungle. Passing through the outer treeline had felt like entering another world entirely, a paradise untouched by man, a sacred place for nature to reign within the winding walls of a thousand trees and beneath the steadfast roof of the canopy. Though the sun is blocked out by the leafy umbrella overhead, everywhere seems to glow as though it radiates light itself, a light that bounces off its surroundings until all colours – the vibrant pinks of the orchids and the stark yellows of bananas – are as every bit as stunning as the objects themselves.

With the window wound down, Baekhyun hangs his head out of the frame and takes a deep breath of air, finding it moist and dewy, smelling of the earth and things that grow. It’s refreshing too, even the whiffs of excrement here and there. Mud splatters against the metal side of the Toyota Land Cruiser, the road – more of a dirt track – slushing with murky water beneath the thick tyres. The car itself jolts from left to right, the path unpredictable and probably only meant for walking on in good weather conditions. Nevertheless, at least they can get a ride though here; the thought of staggering the whole ten mile trip with their five trunks of heavy equipment lugging behind them makes Baekhyun cringe.

“There was big storm!” their driver exclaims, a man native to the local village on the outskirts of the jungle, a place where tourists are most known to take their rest stops, thus the car. “Big, big, big! Five—Five days long!” His English is thickly accented and uneven, but it’s good enough to understand, a long-fingered hand making great movements to portray the size of the weather. It helps, really, as Jongdae has only learned the basics of Swahili for the trip; it’s typical that he is fluent in nine languages but not this one. “Water all around! Big, great wind! Flood!”

“Ahh,” Jongdae vocalises his understanding, sharing a nod and a wide smile with the local, both of them sat in the front. “Will there be another storm? Another storm here soon?”

Baekhyun brings his head back in from the window and looks between the two headrests before him, interested in the man’s reply. If there were to be another storm while they’re in the middle of the jungle, who knows what could go wrong. Still, nobody said this was going to be easy. In fact, no one really said anything at all; they’re the first group from their university to brave a trip like this. Everything Baekhyun knows about this place either came out of a book or from the internet, the rest he’ll have to suss for himself.

“No. No more storm.” The native laughs, shooting a smile at Jongdae and then in the rear view mirror; Baekhyun just catches it when he looks up and returns one kindly. “Just sunshine and good—good times.”

“You hear that?” Jongdae grins, twisting around in his seat to face him and Yixing in the back. “Just sunshine and good times from here on out, my friend and boyfriend.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes at Jongdae’s extravagance, smiling despite himself when Yixing also doesn’t look too impressed. “You’re so embarrassing, Jongdae,” he murmurs blankly, casting his gaze out the window.

“That’s why you love me, isn’t it?” Jongdae waggles his eyebrows, then gets flicked on the forehead between them.

“It’s good news, though,” Baekhyun pipes up, leaning forwards against the seat in front to better look at both of his companions. He also breaks up their annoyingly sweet moment, not so accidentally. What can he say? He’s been alone and progressively miserable for over a year now, he must share that with the other couples of the world. “I never fancied being stuck out here in a downpour. Bring on the good times, I say.”

Their driver apparently understands him, as he peeps a celebratory honk of the horn and cheers, rising laughter from Baekhyun’s throat. Nevertheless, they are not here to get suntans or explore for recreational purposes. They’re here as part of a project funded by their university, in the field to collect samples from a recently discovered plant, here to run a number of tests to spy out the similarities and differences of growing it in an artificial lab versus its natural habitat. It sounds as boring as it does on paper in a verbal conversation, yet when Baekhyun get to visit places like this – and for free – picking this line of work makes sense again.

In order to carry out these tests, they’ve brought all their lab equipment with them, stacked up in the boot of the car in big trunks and polythene bags to keep them protected from water. Carrying them through the jungle undergrowth won’t be the easiest of tasks but Baekhyun is always up for a challenge, even an impossible one. His blind ambition is both his strength and his weakness and has ended a few of his relationships in the past, both platonic and romantic. People tell him that he’s never satisfied when all he sees is room for improvement.

His mind is brought back to the present when the car engine clatters to a stop, sounding alarmingly like rapid gunfire as the exhaust pipe spits out fumes. The smell of petrol soon clouds the air like a poisonous gas, feeling suffocating in a place so organic. Naturally, Baekhyun’s first reaction is to think that they have arrived at the camp, a small tourist lodge at the end of the trail that caters to both scientists and explorers alike, except when he looks around, all he sees is trees.

“Oh,” Jongdae grunts, then muttering a painfully sarcastic, “ _great_.”

“What is it?” Baekhyun immediately asks, sitting up in his seat and staring through the windscreen, discovering a huge, fallen tree blocking their path. “Ah... I see.”

“It was the storm,” their driver speaks up, making wild gestures with his hands as if representing the movement of the wind. “It must have blown over tree. I did not know.” He turns apologetically to Jongdae who is quick to comfort him, softly speaking words in his native tongue while Baekhyun and Yixing watch on.

The tree itself is humungous, one to rival a redwood, so there is no point in them even thinking about trying to move it out of the way. With this being the only path to the lodge as well, they don’t really have much choice in how to proceed.

“There’s no reason why we can’t just walk the rest of the way,” Baekhyun remarks, tone hopeful, his hand already going down to collect his backpack from where it’s squashed between his parted legs. “How far away are we?”

Jongdae glances at him before attempting to translate, and after a few moments of foreign conversation he reports that they still have five miles to travel. “The sun is going down too, it’s already past seven,” he mutters with a frown to his watch.

“And have you seen that tree, Baekhyun?” Yixing interjects, pointing for emphasis. “How the hell are we supposed to climb over that? And we have the trunks too, not just ourselves.”

“Okay fine, let me think for a minute.” It is safe to say that Baekhyun doesn’t like it when people poke holes in his plans, or finds the holes that he failed to see, so in order to boost his reputation again he starts thinking of alternatives. With a glance to the roadside and what looks to be a small footpath, a lightbulb pings over his head. “Why don’t we just ditch the lodge? We’re self-sufficient anyway. We have our own food and fuel. We can just walk a hundred paces away from the road and find a flat clearing to make our own camp in. Sorted.” Baekhyun beams, very happy with himself and his solution.

Jongdae and Yixing share a long look before the latter crumbles and nods. To their regret, they really don’t have any other options. “Fine,” Jongdae quips. “But if we get lost, Baekhyun, it’s on you.”

Baekhyun doesn’t even take notice of the threat because, to be quite frank, he has just saved the day. He’s already jumping out of the car and heading to the boot by the time Jongdae has just managed to pay their driver for bringing them this far.

“This way looks promising,” he tells Yixing as they swing open the back door to reveal their equipment. “Looks like some kind of footpath.”

Yixing hums in thought, picking up the camera hanging by a strap around his neck to take some shots of their surroundings. “It better be promising,” he murmurs, a faint warning aimed straight for Baekhyun’s optimism.

One by one, he starts to drag their trunks down from the car, collecting them on the road for them all to take to wherever their future camp may be. He scuffs his knees several times and gets oil on his shin from accidentally walking into the towbar, his shorts proving good for keeping him cool but not for keeping him clean, but at least he’s doing something other than taking pictures of ants walking along the side of the road. Besides, any injuries he obtains will be the fruits of hard labour, he shall wear them as badges of honour, even though he’s only a botanist.

Just as he’s loaded the last trunk off the back of the car, Jongdae is jumping out the passenger seat and waving a cheery goodbye to their driver. “He says he doesn’t know when the tree’s going to be moved so he’s going to pick us up from this spot in nine days.”

“Sounds good to me,” Baekhyun chirps, rubbing his palms together eagerly. “We won’t go too far away from the road.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jongdae chuckles, striding up to their equipment and taking two trunks by the handle, wheeling them a few paces towards the path as the Toyota’s engine splutters back to life. Baekhyun glances at the grey smoke puffing out of the exhaust pipe and spares a moment to worry over pollution before he too moves out the way of the turning car.

They wave to their driver as he goes past, the joyful shout of “Kwaheri” – also known as, goodbye – leaving his lips. Jongdae is quick to shout it back, waving animatedly as the local retreats towards the village on the outskirts of the jungle. In the silence, with almost all of the outside world beyond their cocoon, Baekhyun looks around in awe. He never realised how loud the jungle would be. There are birds whistling, insects squeaking and what sounds like a gushing waterfall in the distance. Above them, the leaves rustle in the breeze, Baekhyun catching the movements of small rodent-like animals with his eyes. Everywhere he turns there is something new to look at, and quite frankly, he is blown away by it all.

Soon enough, when Yixing has finished taking his pictures and quietly contemplated over them with Jongdae, they start to navigate their way through the undergrowth. On foot, the paths feel a lot more level than they did in the car, but the wheels on their trunks don’t exactly agree – not that having to wrestle them over rocks, tree roots and random burrows helps that much.

The path leads them downhill, the trail clearer towards the top and becoming more overgrown the further they travel. Bushes and ferns spew over the track borders on either side, Baekhyun braving through them until he is stung by a branch covered in thorns. Yet as botanists, the idea of cutting down what is in their path doesn’t even cross their minds, for it is unthinkable to kill that which they love – even if it does leave Baekhyun’s shins itchy, red and swollen.

Just when the sun is starting to fully set, bleeding a warm, golden orange through the canopy, the ground levels out and the plant life gives way slightly to a small clearing. Although it is still covered in bamboo and lianas – peculiar looking trees that twist and wind like veins – it is the best place they have found so far, only a ten-minute walk from the road, and so, with some exchanged looks of mutual understanding, they begin to set up camp for the night. Even with his overflowing enthusiasm, Baekhyun admits that they can’t keep this as their camp for the whole nine days, and it seems as though the others agree too.

“Being at the bottom of a bank isn’t the best really,” Jongdae grunts, using a long stick to move leaves and other fallen natural debris to level out the ground.

Baekhyun sighs, stretching his arms above his head after fastening their trunks to the ground with storm straps. “We can move in the morning. Only unpack the essentials.” Still, even with only unpacking the essentials, they manage to empty a trunk and a half.

The tents go up next, erected atop tarp and surrounded by mosquito nets. Baekhyun gets one to himself whereas Yixing and Jongdae share, Baekhyun threatening that if he hears any suspicious noises, he’s going to throttle them with his microscope.

After warming a few tins of tomato soup over a gas hob, they finally retire, Baekhyun giving his manual one last skim by the light of his battery powered lantern before closing his eyes and listening to the tranquil soundtrack of the breathing jungle.

*

The night passes, dawn breaks, and Baekhyun rouses to the smell of brewing coffee. He crawls groggily from his tent, Jongdae kindly unfolding his small camping stool for him as he makes his way towards him and Yixing.

“Sleep well?” the latter asks with a smile, handing him a small metal cup, the contents steaming.

“Sort of,” he replies, voice crumbling in the early morning air before he takes a small sip. “I’ll take a look around while you two can pack up if you want, find a new place.”

There are nods, smiles, and then Baekhyun is on his way, gently scouring their surroundings for a better location. Within three hours, their trunks have been transported several kilometres to the north – compass coming in handy to log their direction – and they are unpacking fully, leaving no trunk unopened.

Baekhyun gets to work positioning the solar panels beneath a gap in the canopy, while Yixing takes out his collapsible shovel and starts to dig a trench around where they’re staying. Once Jongdae has finished clearing the ground, he starts pegging down vast sheets of tarp for their equipment and living essentials to sit on. Folding tables are erected, their resources unpacked and presented under the protection of a portable gazebo with zip-on walls, lit with solar powered lanterns that become wired up to the panels. It almost feels wrong to Baekhyun to be bringing so many man-made things into a place like this, but he comforts himself with the fact that their stay is only a short one.

The place they have chosen has a grass carpet, littered with the bright red flags of heliconia petals and clusters of waxy ferns that resemble fountains. Scents of dirt, moss and bark hang sweetly in the air, a gentle breeze keeping things circulating enough to blow away the smells of their own body odour as they work to build camp. All around them, the jungle thickens. To the right, things grows right up to the end of a deep ravine surrounded by great boulders and mighty palm trees, concealing a deathly drop of a hundred feet. To the left, the ground slopes down massively, revealing the source of the trickling water sound as a lazy river can be seen through the greens and browns, breaking into white bubbles as it is cut by rocks in the bed. Above them, vines as tall as two-story buildings hang down from the branches of kapok and ceiba trees – or so Baekhyun thinks. It is hard for him to identify the kind of tree from their bark alone.

One of the last things they do is create a fire pit and set light to their kindling. For lunch, they eat the bland contents of several tins mixed together with a set of disposable spoons, and once they have regained their strength, they set out to find the Oranda flower, their new experiment. Split up and communicating through wireless radios, each of them head in a different direction and report back what they find, Baekhyun burning with jealously when Yixing claims he has just seen a gorilla taking a stroll with its baby on its back. So far, the only animal life he has seen is some ants and a woodpecker. Very pedestrian.

Nevertheless, he is the first to come across their desired specimen, the achievement and exhilaration bubbling through his body. He wastes no time in telling his friends, only to get a rather suspicious silence in response. Baekhyun narrows his eyes, drawing his radio to his mouth again and pressing down the button. When the white noise stops, he darkly warns, “If you two are fucking somewhere, I’m going to leave the both of you here to die.”

He stares accusingly at a random tree unfortunate enough to be in his line of sight while he waits for a response, getting a delayed one from breathless Jongdae who starts stammering in his own defence.

“H-Hey Baek, we’re not— _stop it_ —we’re not fucking at all, honestly. We’re just— _get off, Yixing_ —taking a little b-break.”

Scoffing, Baekhyun clips his radio back into his belt and decides to focus all his energy on work instead. Dropping his backpack off his shoulder, he begins to collect samples, carefully clipping off small pieces of the petals, leaves and stigma without harming it. With petals the shades of a smouldering sunset and serrated, roundish leaves with a cool blue tinge, it really is a breath-taking flower. Although the origin of it is unknown at this point, Baekhyun believes it to be a creation of both the water lily and the small dwarf jade tree, despite the fact they grow in two completely different climates and are undoubtedly the most dissimilar plants ever. It has yet to be proven, but once he’s back in the lab at university, it will be the first thing he does.

The next days that pass are warm and peaceful. Baekhyun does his best to avoid Yixing and Jongdae as they slink around the camp together and disappear into their tent in the middle of the day. He doesn’t want to know what they’re doing, but of course his mind insists on filling in the blanks for him; the lewd moans don’t really help either. Be that as it may, Baekhyun makes a pact with himself, one that states that he will not interfere with any of their business unless he starts hearing dirty talk. The last time that happened, he was traumatised (and still is).

He sits at his portable desk, peering through a microscope at the different samples he has collected from various different Oranda flowers, trying to find patterns and similarities between them that he can compare against their own lab grown versions. Visually, the only difference he has found so far is that the leaves are much waxier on the plants grown here, probably because of the climate. It’s all tedious and boring when he is not discovering anything, and Baekhyun decides to finally end proceedings for the day when he smells something frying outside the gazebo.

“Just cooking up some sausages,” Jongdae greets him, licking his lips after as he stares at the fat sizzling in the pan. “Found anything?”

Baekhyun sighs in fatigue as he sits down on his camping stool, shaking his head. “Nothing substantial. I bet I _would_ find something if I had my two fellow botanists actually helping me, but what can you do? They’re too busy being in love.”

Jongdae looks at him with a quiet smile. “To cheer you up, I’m going to let you have an extra sausage.”

Chuckling, his spirits lightened, Baekhyun thanks Jongdae and then receives a cool can of cola from Yixing. They toast to the jungle, their lives, and all the dicks Baekhyun is sure to get once they go home and party, before they eat dinner and play a few card games beneath the radiant shine of the sun between the trees.

When Baekhyun lies down to sleep that night, he finds himself smiling faintly at the ceiling of his tent. He hopes he does meet the man of his dreams soon. It would be nice to have somebody to share his life with, especially the little moments.

After zipping himself up in his sleeping bag and plumping the pillow, he finds himself a comfortable position and smirks at how he gets all this room to himself.

Three hours later, in the dead of night, when Baekhyun wakes up to hear some ominous animalistic grunting on the other side of his tent, he decides that yes, he would _love_ a boyfriend right now, even a shitty one, because what _the fuck_ is that? Those sounds are definitely not coming from Jongdae or Yixing, and they are starting to get closer.

Baekhyun’s ears hone in on gruff panting, the sheer volume of it implying that the creature it comes from is much, _much_ bigger than him. Too afraid to turn on his battery lantern and even more afraid of contacting the others through the radio, Baekhyun lies there in terror. He can hear the footfall now, the sound of the tarp crunching under the animal’s weight so deafening in the silence of the night that he’s even scared to breathe; surely, it must have woken Jongdae and Yixing up too. He really doesn’t think he can deal with this on his own.

The foreign breathing gets louder, Baekhyun shrinking further into his sleeping bag and wishing he could disappear when he swears he sees a blurry figure casting a shadow on his tent wall. It’s wide and tall, but it could just be his eyes playing tricks on him in the darkness, his mind making him see what he is expecting (more like dreading) to see. Nevertheless, the noises are as real as the sun and they are most definitely _not_ going away. In fact, the creature – Baekhyun truly hopes that there is only one of them – sounds like its sniffing his external mosquito net. Then it snorts.

A million animals run through his mind as he tries to blindly identify whatever it is, using only the noises it makes and his completely unfounded guess at its size. Trouble is, the thing keeps snorting, which means all Baekhyun can think in his minute state of panic is that it is a giant pig with a giant slobbery mouth and red demon eyes that’s hungry for human flesh. The only thing that calms him upon coming to that conclusion is that pigs have terrible eyesight, and so long as he doesn’t make any noise and he still smells of insect repellent (not of human), he should be alright. He can wait out until the mutant rainforest pig has had a good look around and decided that everything is boring, because yes, botany is boring and Baekhyun is sure as _hell_ not going to die for it.

Apparently, Jongdae and Yixing think otherwise.

Baekhyun gawks at the sound of a zip coming undone, momentarily petrified at the prospect of the pig undoing his tent until he realises that he is still secure. He wants to yell out for them to stop but he can’t for the life of him find his voice. Making a noise would make himself a target and although he is terrified for his friends, he’s not ready to die yet. When Jongdae screams, that completely changes.

He grabs his lantern, he grabs his emergency torch, he grabs the first sharp item he sees (a pair of nail scissors), and then he leaps from the tent to find himself shining a light into a midnight black face. A pair of beady eyes, hooded beneath a prominent brow bone, twinkle in the presence of his small LED light. The leathery, wrinkled skin of the creature carves its way over a hollow-looking nose with upturned nostrils and a slim, drooping mouth. Everywhere beyond is covered in thick black fur, and that’s when Baekhyun realises he has just come face to face with a gorilla.

Just as he yells out in fright, the gorilla lets rip a heart-stopping roar and stands up on its hind legs to beat its chest, leaving Baekhyun to stumble back into another hard object that, to his relief, turns out to be his friends. When Yixing takes him in his arms, either hugging him from behind or using him as a human shield, Baekhyun gets the chance to briefly glance elsewhere, only to wish that he hadn’t immediately after. They are absolutely surrounded, about twenty gorillas alone creating a wall between them and the rest of the forest – their escape.

Cursing himself, Baekhyun realises he dropped his lantern on the ground. He starts to pray that the battery will run out soon, his eyes staring at the bulb with such intensity that they trick him into thinking it’s dimming. Truth be told, he really doesn’t want to watch death barrel towards him in the form of a giant, one-hundred-and-sixty-kilogram gorilla. He would much prefer to be oblivious and be taken by surprise, even though he knows it’s coming anyway.

“What are we supposed to do?!” Yixing hisses desperately, his body leaning almost completely against Baekhyun’s back, which really won’t help the either of them in the short term or the long term because Baekhyun feels like he is about to collapse.

“I brought my gun,” whispers Jongdae, suddenly whipping his firearm out of his pocket and readying it to shoot.

“Are you _mad_?!” Baekhyun jumps into action, throwing his hands over the weapon to deter him. “Shoot that one—” ‘that one’ starts banging its fists on the ground as if preparing to charge— “and the others will come running for us!”

Baekhyun can just about see Jongdae’s face when his friend turns to look at him in panic. “Then what do you suppose we do? Stand here and wait to be bludgeoned to death?”

And that seems like the reality of it all. The unexpected has come to bite them all in the ass and there’s nothing they can do about it. They were here to test plants, not rival wild gorillas. How are they supposed to defend themselves against an army of them? To put it simply, they can’t. They won’t. And as surreal as it may feel, they are about to die.

Baekhyun has never been one to sit and contemplate death in the shower, on a bus ride or in those moments before sleep. Naturally, he has always seen it as a far off thing, something not to worry about until he’s eighty or older when he has lived his life and has some material wealth to show it. Now he’ll never get married, never get his master’s degree, never own a house without Yixing and Jongdae soiling the couch with their wasted children.

There is movement in the sky, Baekhyun crying out when he realises that gorillas can fly now and are coming to take them out like cannon balls. He closes his eyes just as a vine swings across his vision and the threatened gorilla starts stomping forwards on its hind legs. He always thought he’d be brave, but in his last moments, he wants to shut out the world and think of home. He thinks about his parents for a long time, about all the Christmases they spent together, all the birthdays and the holidays. He thinks of the time he broke his leg while skiing and almost drowned in a three-foot deep paddling pool, and then he thinks that he has been thinking for an awfully long time and decides to open his eyes.

He expects to see nothing but white, Death’s waiting area, when instead, he finds himself staring at another face. With the lantern behind the figure, Baekhyun’s bleary eyes can only find his outline in the darkness. Still, he must be hallucinating, for although he is sure that this thing is not a gorilla, his brain is telling him that it is a man.

Yixing and Jongdae make small noises of shock behind him while he just stares. Somehow, he harnesses enough brain power to flick on his torch, and that is when his jaw drops to the ground. There is a caveman in front of him.

“Is this a dream?” he whispers, this whole thing so utterly ridiculous that there can be no other explanation. Nevertheless, his theory is debunked when Yixing grunts out a snappy “ _No_ ” and Jongdae punches him in the back.

Awed, Baekhyun slowly moves the beam of the torch over the man’s body from top to bottom. His skin is tanned and dirty, pale scars scattered here and there in various sizes and shapes. All he wears is a loincloth, a material of a murky beige colour that looks like it is made from an old hoodie he happened across, the rest of his body (feet included) bare to the world and its elements. Despite his arguably disturbing appearance and sudden arrival, Baekhyun’s thoughts are surprisingly clear when he mentally remarks on how soft and kind his face looks, framed by waves of long black hair that just touch the skin beneath his defined pectorals. Now, Baekhyun is awestruck. And confused. Though when he opens his mouth to say something, the mystery man relieves him of their intense eye contact and turns around to where the previous gorilla had paused mid-charge. They look at each other, as though they’re familiar, and Baekhyun gasps when they start having some kind of conversation with a collection of random snorts and huffs. Not a moment later, the gorillas are leaving, sinking back into the darkness whence they came, leaving their camp and their lives untouched.

“Jongdae,” Yixing whispers, reminding Baekhyun that his friends still exist and that they’re not dead. “Did you put my weed in the dinner we ate?”

Jongdae gulps. “I wish I had.”

Distracted, Baekhyun gasps, “You brought _marijuana_?!”

“Shh! The big one’s leaving!” Yixing quickly changes the subject, hitting him on the arm and urging him to look around at the caveman again. As if defending himself, Baekhyun aims the torch straight back up again. He holds his breath as the man walks closer until they are only a foot apart, his torch now aimed upwards and casting creepy shadows on his face. As Yixing had said, the big gorilla has now gone. They all have, thanks to the caveman.

“H-Hello.” Baekhyun finds himself talking completely by accident, trembling hands clenched around his plastic torch so tight he accidentally turns the light off. Plunged into darkness, Baekhyun panics before he hears Jongdae powering up their generator. When the lanterns around their camp blink to life, Baekhyun finds the caveman to be several inches closer than he was before, causing him to awkwardly strain his back when trying to lean away.

“Thank you for s-saving us from the—the gorillas. Thought I was a goner,” he laughs awkwardly, the blank stare he’s getting making him feel uneasy. Once he clears his throat, he drops the sweet act and squares his shoulders, trying to compare. “Um… Can you understand me?” After a beat, Baekhyun gets an idea, calling Jongdae over to talk some Swahili to him.

From a five-metre distance, Jongdae calls out a shaky “Habari!” as a hello. Yet the caveman seems intent on looking at Baekhyun and Baekhyun alone. “Asante!” Still nothing. “Well, I tried. You deal with the jungle boy, Baekhyun. I think he likes you.”

“Yeah!” Yixing quickly agrees. Just typical, Baekhyun thinks as he clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes, leave him alone with the weird monkey man. Great. “We’ll be in our tent if you need us.” Baekhyun gets patted patronisingly on the shoulder and left alone, but a part of him does prefer it this way. At least Jongdae isn’t here to wave a gun around. “Turn the lights off when you’re done!”

Deciding to ignore Jongdae and Yixing – something he should really do more often –he concentrates on the new arrival. His eyes are a deep, chocolate brown, bordered by soft, sweeping lashes. With lips parted in concentration, the caveman ducks his head down to line their faces up and begins to sniff at him. Baekhyun blanches when he feels the man’s nose pressing against his neck, his palms shooting up to barricade himself from the personal touches.

“Woah,” he chuckles awkwardly again, strained and high-pitched, not that the jungle boy notices. “I probably stink a bit but… Uh… Yeah…” As gently as possible, so as to not startle him, he presses his hands against the caveman’s (ridiculously hard and toned) chest to peacefully ease him away. The intrigued eyes drop to look at his hands, his palm becoming the focal point of the situation when jungle boy brings up his own hand to press against it, unfolding it from the knuckles and splaying out his fingers to mirror Baekhyun’s own. He seems to be confused, eyebrows twitching into what almost becomes a frown, as he takes in their similarities. Then, he grunts at Baekhyun, looking expectant as though he’s just asked a question. Baekhyun flinches.

“Um…” He decides to ignore the ‘question’ and ask one of his own instead. “Do you live here?” It would be plausible, he reckons. It would explain his haggard and weathered appearance, lack of a language too. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop it from being frightfully strange. “Ah, um,” Baekhyun stammers, thinking of a way to rephrase the question that jungle boy doesn’t appear to understand without realising their hands are still pressed together. “You,” he points at him, “home?” he points around at the rainforest in general, gasping like he’s been stabbed when the caveman nods and lets out a low, rumbling, “Yes.”

“You speak!” he cries, startling the man back a few paces before cupping his hands over his mouth. “Sorry! Sorry!” he waves his arms around, flashing a friendly smile to convince his new friend (debatable) to let his wariness go. “How peculiar,” he murmurs thoughtfully afterwards, rubbing his chin while his arms are folded. “Do you have a name?” Of course, jungle boy stops understanding things, so Baekhyun places his hand over his chest and clearly announces his name. “Me, Baekhyun. You, name?”

The caveman narrows his eyes at him. Baekhyun can almost see the cogs churning in his mind as he tries to figure out what’s going on, but it doesn’t take long before he’s grunting again and taking another bold step forwards. “Baekhyun,” he almost growls, voice feral and thunderous as he gestures across to him. When he gestures to himself, Baekhyun watches the plump lips as they carve around the word, “Yeol.”

“Yeol,” he hums in thought, the man then getting excited at the fact he’s said his name. “I’m right? Your name is Yeol?” He laughs lightly, admiring the man as he hunches down a little and bounces on his feet. “Well, it was nice to meet you, Yeol.” As it courtesy, Baekhyun bows, smiling at Yeol following him eagerly with his eyes when he dips down and back up. “But it’s late. I think I’m going to go and sleep now.” With a point to his tent, Baekhyun does his best to help Yeol understand. “Me, sleep. Goodbye, Yeol.”

He hoots something, a gorilla sound, as Baekhyun starts to make his way towards the generator to turn the lights off. When he turns around again, the camp still illuminated just for a moment, he witnesses Yeol as he lowers himself to all fours and crawls into the dark cloak of the trees, as though he were a gorilla himself. With that image ingrained in his head, Baekhyun switches off the lights and zips himself up in his tent. Perhaps when he wakes up, he will realise that this was all just some crazy dream. A part of him hopes that it is real, though. That it did just happen. What a story to take back home.

*

Baekhyun wakes with a start when he hears shuffling outside. Instantly, his mind is consumed with visions of the giant demon pig again and he thrashes about in his sleeping bag trying to get away from something that isn’t there. It’s safe to say that he feels somewhat stupid when he realises how irrational that is – and how pathetic he must have just looked, scrambling for his life away from something completely imaginary – but at least he is inside his tent where no one can see him. Despite that, he doesn’t feel any less embarrassed, and with a moan and a cringe, he starts to get up.

He goes through his small morning routine of rolling on some deodorant and grabbing a mint from his little stash in his backpack. Once he’s unzipped his tent, he bangs his boots on the ground upside down just in case there’s something unsavoury lurking inside and sets to work lacing them up around his ankles, briefly glancing at Yixing and Jongdae already hunched around the smoking fire, both staring at something off to his right. They seem to be absorbed in whatever it is, not necessarily in fear, though they still look a little tense.

Is it another gorilla?

Baekhyun’s eyes widen and he rushes out, almost falling over his own feet on the way, and stares in the same direction. There, crouched behind the trunk of a thick tree with his head peering hesitantly around, is Yeol. So it wasn’t a dream after all.

When Yeol notices him, his posture straightens. He perks up like a dog that has just had its name called, and he takes a few eager steps forwards on his feet and knuckles with intent, blinking eyes.

“Oh, wow…” Baekhyun gasps when his eyes drop to the floor, finding a ginormous pile of fruit stacked up like a mountain on top of the tarp covering. Bananas, watermelons, pineapples. Mangoes, oranges, avocados. Guavas, lemons, eggplants. It bursts with colour and leaves Baekhyun feeling rather lightheaded, disbelief an alcohol in his system as he tries to take it all in. Yeol, the jungle boy monkey man, has brought him a crap ton of fruit. That was not expected at all.

“It’s for you,” Jongdae’s voice calls out from behind, Baekhyun glancing over his shoulder to see him sipping coffee. “We tried to steal some but he wouldn’t let us.”

Yixing nods in agreement, his head resting on Jongdae’s shoulders with his hands wrapped around a steaming travel mug. “Made all these freaky grunting noises. We’re just sticking to our beans.”

As crazy as it is, Baekhyun begins to feel bashful. Could all this fruit really be for him? His eyes flicker nervously up to where Yeol is slowly creeping away from the treeline and towards him, moving over the ground like a real gorilla with his fists coming forward first, feet trailing behind. It’s incredible, the way his body has formed. If he were covered in black fur, he would be indistinguishable.

Baekhyun lowers himself down to sit cross-legged on the tarp before his fruit volcano. Yeol continues to advance while he takes it all in, reaching for a banana first and finding it to be perfectly ripe. Before he can peel it, though, Yeol is stealing it from his hand with bright eyes and making cheerful huffing noises, peeling it for him.

“Oh,” Baekhyun chuckles, watching Yeol throw away the skin and break the banana in half. “Thank you. It’s much too early for me to peel my own banana.”

Jongdae snorts, then chokes. Yeol holds the banana up to Baekhyun’s mouth and refuses to let him have it back. His skin heats up when he realises that jungle boy wants to feed him, and although there’s a significant language barrier between them, he thought a banana was a well-known universal symbol for things of a phallic nature. Like dicks. So, when Baekhyun has to open his mouth and let Yeol push the banana between his lips, he feels like dying inside.

“This is too good,” Yixing cackles along with his boyfriend, the clicks of the camera deafeningly loud over their laughter.

He has to stop Yeol from pushing anymore in when he’s about to gag, then chewing on the banana with a big smile and making pronounced noises of enjoyment. As if communicating with a baby, he nods his head in an overdramatic fashion, wiping his lips after and clearing his throat for a second to try and dispel the awkwardness he feels.

“That was very nice, Yeol,” he thanks him kindly, having him bounce with glee in response when he says his name.

“Baekhyun,” Yeol cheers, banging his fists on the ground for a second before he decides to copy him and sit cross-legged.

“ _They’re on first name basis already_ ,” Yixing hisses.

“ _Pretty sure that was mating behaviour just then_ ,” remarks Jongdae.

Baekhyun wants to bash them over the head with his incubator.

“Thank you for all the fruit,” he says instead, trying to ignore his troublesome colleagues – because they are most certainly not his friends when they take pictures of him deepthroating a banana at the hands of a feral man who lives in the jungle with monkeys. Definitely not.

To distract himself, he gives Yeol a gleaming smile and laughs a little when the man goes to reciprocate. If anything, he finds himself quite endeared by him, as strange as it is. He’s just inquisitive, and Baekhyun wonders if he has ever seen another human before. He must have heard one at least, for he knows a few words here and there that he can’t have learned from the gorillas he seems to live with. None of it really makes sense, and it probably never will. Chances are, Yeol will never be educated enough to reveal his back story, Baekhyun’s curiosity be damned.

His new friend feeds him several more fruits until he has to declare that he’s full, Baekhyun successfully diverting Yeol’s attention by beginning to offer him breakfast as well, not leaving him any time to be upset that he just turned down a mango. Trying to mimic his behaviour, Baekhyun makes a few grunting noises and bounces closer to him, picking up an orange and clearly stating its name.

“Orange.”

Yeol’s eyes light up immediately. “Orange!”

Tinkling with laughter, Baekhyun starts to peel it for him, the wide, imaginative eyes of his jungle friend eagerly following the intricate movements of his fingers. He feeds Yeol the orange segments one by one, stretching out his hand to place the food between his lips. By the end, Yeol has shuffled so close to him that their faces are only a foot apart, and when Baekhyun shows him the empty peel, Yeol thrusts anther orange in his hand and implies he wants him to do it all over again.

Work doesn’t stop though, even with the discovery of a wild man in the trees. Baekhyun trudges into the gazebo after his second cup of coffee and sits down at his desk scattered with notebooks, diagrams and his two microscopes, currently focused on a couple of different samples he’s comparing. This morning, Jongdae pulled the lab-grown samples out of their freezer to defrost, one of which he’s looking at now.

After a while, he vaguely becomes aware of a scratching sound and pulls his eyes away from the eye piece to find Yeol crouched beside him, dragging a pencil across the pages of his open manual – the page on gorillas, coincidentally.

“Woah, hey, stop!” is his first reaction, going to remove the pencil from Yeol’s grip, only to find it inexplicably sturdy. “You shouldn’t do that.” He decides to verbally scold instead, then feeling guilty when Yeol looks up at him with these vast, innocent eyes that practically scream _adorable_. “It’s…” Baekhyun sighs, letting the pencil go. “Here, just have a blank page.”

Yeol watches intently as he pulls out a refill pad and flips the cover over. “Blank page!”

Baekhyun then returns to his work, a noticeable smile on his face. He is strangely pleased at Yeol’s decision to stay in the camp for the day. All he does is scribble lines like an infant and sniffs the things he is yet to explore, like Baekhyun’s dirty underwear when he thinks it’s high time to let himself into his tent. That had been rather embarrassing, but Yixing had ensured him that one day, he’ll be able to look back and laugh at the video he shot of him running after Yeol with his underwear in his mouth. Baekhyun’s not too sure about that really, now that he’s had time to brood.

Still, Yeol unwittingly gets himself back into his favour. Throughout the day, he brings him food and takes away the peel or the stone once he’s eaten. When Baekhyun is resting his eyes with his head on the desk, he will start to feel fingers in his hair. He knows that Yeol is only cleaning him, as is in the nature of an ape, but he likes to pretend that Yeol is giving him a massage instead.

In reality, monkey man isn’t that bad looking, and when Baekhyun finds himself considering how attractive he is, he has to take a step back from his thoughts for a moment.

“Really?” he asks himself, staring blankly at the gazebo wall in front of him as if meeting eyes with his conscience. “You think a wild, jungle boy, who has diabolical hygiene and appalling language, is hot?” A heavy sigh rattles his shoulders and he buries his face in his hands. Clearly, he has spent too many months being single and surrounded by the most in-love couple ever. A glance out the doorway to where Yixing is sat between Jongdae’s legs, leaning back against his chest as they play with each other’s fingers, only proves it further.

Maybe he should have a drink.

Or seventeen.

“Do you guys bring any beer?” he shouts out, his friends turning to look at him over their shoulders and Yeol bounding into view from where he’s probably been rummaging through his suitcase again.

Jongdae cackles, arms wrapped securely around Yixing’s waist. “I wondered how long it would be before you asked that.”

“Beer!” Yeol repeats brightly, basking in the attention when everyone turns to look at him. “Beer!”

Later, when the sun starts to set, Yeol comes to say goodbye for the day. Baekhyun waves to him with a kind smile, blushing uncontrollably when Yeol presses their palms together again, and for a moment he imagines him to be a regular man, dressed up in a smart shirt and a pair of work trousers with a manbun of some kind. The image is dashed, of course, when Yeol lowers onto his knuckles and feet and prowls off into the undergrowth.

“Here’s that beer you wanted.” Jongdae delivers him his drink. He takes it in silence, watching as the ferns settle in the place where Yeol disappeared. Baekhyun doesn’t know if he’s feeling sullen because he’s gone or because his own feelings are betraying him. Maybe he’s just feeling thankful from yesterday when Yeol saved him from a brutal death. Yeah, that must be it.

For dinner, Baekhyun grabs a bag of pasta and a packet of cheese sauce to whip them up something quickly, hunched over their central fire for only ten minutes before it’s ready. The cheese sauce is thick and delicious, the pasta seasoned with a few pinches of salt, and Baekhyun feels quite content until he has to watch Yixing wiping Jongdae’s mouth clean with his thumb. He hates how he’s jealous of them, hates how they managed to find each other and stay together all these years while he’s been struggling since his first year of university. Not only that, but he finds it painfully cruel how the only man who has really paid any attention to him in the past two years has been a rainforest savage. Typical, really.

With a lonesome sigh, he quickly wraps up his dinner and announces that he’s going to bed, side-eyeing the mountain of fruit that still lies scattered by the doorway to his tent. As he lies down to rest in his sleeping bag, ears tuned into the birds and the bugs, he wonders to himself where Yeol came from. He definitely knows some English, as he said ‘yes’ unprompted, which means he must have lived in some kind of civilised area before the age of five. That, and he definitely doesn’t look like one of the locals; his skin may be tanned but it is not a glossy ebony shade, which means he wasn’t born here. In fact, Yeol looks like he was born in the same place as Baekhyun was, which Baekhyun finds perplexing. If that be the case, how did he get here?

“Who are you?” Baekhyun murmurs to the ceiling, hands clasped over his stomach. He doubts he’ll ever know who Yeol really is.

*

In the morning, Baekhyun sets aside his wallowing in order to be fed breakfast. Yeol looks as foolishly happy as ever, bounding over like a dog and starting to assort his fruit pile. Fortunately, Baekhyun is not subject to a banana this time, though when he bites into a slice of watermelon and a trail of juice goes gliding down his chin, Yeol is right there reaching out his thumb to swipe it away. Stunned, Baekhyun watches as the jungle man sucks his thumb into his mouth and makes a happy grunting sound before he turns back to Baekhyun and insists he eat more. Of course, he’s no expert of zoologist or anything like that, but Baekhyun is quite sure that that kind of behaviour is abnormal for a gorilla, even if Yeol isn’t really a gorilla.

Nevertheless, he considers it a fluke, or perhaps he’s being dense and gorillas _do_ actually do things like that. He does briefly skim his manual again during his mid-morning break over the rim of his coffee mug, yet finds nothing on mating behaviour – not that he wants to believe that it _is_ mating behaviour – is mentioned. Huffing, he closes the book and sets it down on the desk, thinking glumly that at least he now knows how to try and pacify a gorilla that’s growing aggressive. He has to crouch, side-eye it, lick his wrist and then lie down in a ball, apparently. He doesn’t really fancy trying it out.

He tries to focus on work over everything else, including Jongdae and Yixing being even more disgusting today, but he finds himself distracted by more of Yeol’s weird behaviour. At one point, he approaches Baekhyun at his desk and throws his arm over his shoulder as if he were completely human and checking up on his progress. Baekhyun flashes him a calm smile, despite his surprise, and finds that he likes being in Yeol’s embrace like this. Strangely enough, he feels comforted.

From his scribbled notes, he starts to type up his day reports on his tablet as proof to their university of the day-by-day progress they’re making – and proof that they’re not just taking a holiday, though Baekhyun cannot vouch for his friends on that one. Yeol is mesmerised by the electronic screen, and when Baekhyun decides to blow his mind even more by opening the camera app, he goes berserk. His calloused hands stamp down on Baekhyun’s shoulders and he jumps around as though he’s having a long awaited eureka moment. To capture it, Baekhyun discreetly presses record, face almost split in half with how hard he’s smiling at the sight of Yeol frolicking about.

“Yeol,” Baekhyun announces, pointing at the Yeol on the screen.

“Baekhyun!” Yeol squeezes his hands around his shoulders, hunching down to better place himself in the frame. With inquisitive eyes, he starts to inspect both the device and his face, two things he has never really seen before. “Baekhyun,” he points to Baekhyun on the screen, tongue peeking out of his mouth in concentration. “Yeol!” His finger sweeps over to himself, a laugh erupting from his throat when he tries to poke his own finger on the screen but they don’t line up; he chases it around adorably, stopping when he finally finds the tiny camera at the top and their fingers can meet.

“Yeol is handsome.” Baekhyun grins up at him, capturing his attention in an instant.

Yeol blinks down at him, his finger still posed in mid-air, before breaking out into a smile. “Baekhyun is handsome.” And he bops Baekhyun on the nose.

The botanist gasps, gobsmacked, and then fumbles about turning the recording off on the tablet. He’s sure he’s blushing, his whole demeanour taking a shy turn as he quickly packs his equipment away.

“Baekhyun is…” Yeol starts again, Baekhyun slowly coming to sit upright again and trying to meet his eyes. “Sexy.”

His eyes balloon and he gapes up at him, racking his brain trying to remember if he has ever said these words in front of Yeol before, except he hasn’t. He has never said anything even like it, so where did they come from? And does Yeol even know what they mean? His heart stammers in his chest, blood pulsing around his face until his cheeks are prickling. The same cheeks are full-on stabbed by a thousand needles when suddenly Yeol’s hands are cupping his face as if it’s the most normal thing to do ever.

“ _Yeol_ ,” he squeaks, afraid of what he’s about to do, afraid of Yixing and Jongdae seeing them, afraid of his own feelings. What on earth is going on?

“Baekhyun,” he replies confidently, Baekhyun’s name the start and end to the sentence. It sends flutters through Baekhyun’s stomach and leaves him a little light-headed, and this _can’t_ be happening.

“O-Okay.” As calmly as possible, he removes Yeol’s hands from his face with his own, bowing his head immediately after. “I think it’s time for dinner now, don’t you?” To be fair, the sun _is_ going down, and although Yeol might not completely understand him, at least Baekhyun feels at ease with himself that it’s not a totally implausible excuse.

He leaves the gazebo to find Jongdae and Yixing leaning against the base of a tree, kissing and caressing and making revolting slobbery sounds. As much as his insides tingle with jealousy, he has to give it to them; they’re one hell of an attractive couple. Somehow, they make making out look like an art. Hunger beats his awe, though, so he clears his throat as politely as possible and asks them if they can lend a hand with dinner.

As neither of them are any good at doing the real cooking, Baekhyun mainly asks them to stir, chop and turn the meat while he keeps Yeol busy and away by braiding his hair – because jungle boy and fire don’t seem like a good mix; and his hair is indescribably healthy. Baekhyun finds it to be a therapeutic distraction from his work, though repeatedly overlapping the strands is probably hypnotising him somehow. With Yeol sat cross-legged between his knees on the floor, his head is at the perfect height for plaiting, and by the time dinner is done he has weaved a total of ten handsome braids into the top layers of his hair.

“Is _George of the Jungle_ staying for dinner?” Jongdae asks as he takes a sizzling frying pan off the heat.

Baekhyun has to tear himself away from Yeol’s bright smile, his head leaning back so far that they are able to look at each other. He has his hands still in the thick strands of Yeol’s hair, a tease of a massage on his fingertips, and wonders if Yeol thinks he’s been grooming him this entire time. Well, even if he has, this is Baekhyun’s style of grooming, and if he may say so, it looks rather good on him.

“His name is Yeol, Jongdae,” Baekhyun replies, rolling his eyes playfully at his friend’s little joke. In front of him, Yeol giddily chirps “ _Baekhyun_!” out of nowhere, like he’s glad just to be looking at him, like he wants nothing other than his smiles. “And I don’t know,” Baekhyun goes on. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Jongdae _tsk_ s, readying himself before he looks Yeol in the eye and opens his mouth. No words leave his lips, however, for the next minute or so, and just as Baekhyun starts frowning with indignance, he realises that Jongdae is no longer looking at Yeol but at something behind him. To the sound of an inhuman grunting huff, Baekhyun slowly looks over his shoulder to find a troop of gorillas emerging from the shadows of the tree trunks, framed by the ferns and the strangler figs. Yeol soon follows, his hand clamping down on Baekhyun’s thigh as leverage to pull himself around, and just like that, he starts talking like a gorilla.

He lets loose soft grunts and pants, “hoo” and “hum” sounds too, and all Baekhyun can do is watch as Yeol seems to grow more impatient with the alpha gorilla he appears to be talking to. Or arguing with. Each noise grows in volume but lowers in pitch, and soon Yeol is crawling out from behind Baekhyun to face the head gorilla, who stands with his fists planted firmly on the ground and his head held high and aloof, alone. Baekhyun watches as its leathery mouth forms their language, as its wide, upward nostrils flare and widen, as its black, unsettling eyes narrow and harden. Even he can feel the tension and he doesn’t even understand what’s going on.

“ _Should I get my gun_?”

“ _Shut up, Jongdae_.”

Baekhyun glares at his friends, intent on maintaining it until he catches movement in the corner of his eye. Yeol is looking at him again, eyes no longer wide with glee but sorrow, and as the other gorillas sink back into the shadows whence they came, their adopted jungle boy morosely follows.

He wants to call out and ask him where’s he going, if he’s coming back, but the words catch in his throat. Instead, Baekhyun returns to dinner and hopes that when he wakes up tomorrow morning, it will be to Yeol’s smile and an abundance of breakfast fruit, just like normal.

*

It doesn’t turn out to be fruit, though. It’s flowers. When Baekhyun crawls ungracefully from his tent, desperate for his morning coffee, he finishes rubbing his eyes to the sight of vibrant reds and yellows, oranges and pinks, purples and blues and even strings of green. And there is Yeol, perched at the head of his design with a giant, unwavering simper. Baekhyun, unexpectedly emotional at the sight of him, finds himself scrambling over for a hug. Yeol hasn’t encountered one of these before, but when his arms wrap sturdily around Baekhyun’s back, Baekhyun thinks he’s got the hang of it just fine.

“Where did all of these come from?” he asks, voice light and airy with joy as he pulls back to meet Yeol’s eyes. “Did you pick these?”

“Yes.” Yeol bounces lightly before dropping from his crouch onto his behind. “For Baekhyun.”

“They’re incredible!” he exclaims, dropping onto his knees and reaching his hand out to gently touch a few silken petals. Being a botanist, he is confident that he can identify most of the flowers brought to him, if not all, and as he scans his eyes over orchids and passion flowers. These types of plants only grow in the canopy layer where there’s enough sunlight, save for the ones quick enough to grow on the ground in spaces left behind by fallen trees, and Baekhyun only then realises the extent of Yeol’s skills. He must be one hell of a climber to get up there, much like a gorilla.

“For Baekhyun,” Yeol speaks again, voice low and grumbly in a relaxing way. Baekhyun looks back to him from the flowers with intent and laughs awkwardly when he realises Yeol is offering him a bamboo cane shoot. As breakfast.

“Oh,” he chuckles, being as gentle as possible when deflecting the food. “I’m quite alright, thank you. Please, you eat it.” Yeol chews happily, Baekhyun relieved that he hasn’t caused offense. Instead, he dines on a few granola bars and has his routine cups of coffee. It wakes him right up, getting him ready for another day hunched over his desk in their research gazebo. He finds himself smiling whenever he looks over at Yeol playing with the flowers he has collected, and blushes a deep shade of red when he’s presented a crown made of long grass and lilies. Jongdae wolf whistles when he tips his head to have it placed on his hair, a camera shutter breaking the silence soon after. His eyes find his friends grinning at him, waggling their eyebrows, and he finally decides that it’s high time he gets out of this camp for a while. He grabs his bag full of all his essentials and loops his arms through the straps, Yeol immediately looking over when he senses movement.

“Are you leaving?” Jongdae calls from across camp, sounding unjustly excited.

Baekhyun nods as he buckles is two backpack straps together over his chest. “Yeah, not for long. Maybe a few hours or so. I just need a change of scenery I think. If I’m not back by sundown, I have my radio. Yeol’s coming with me too.”

The excitement on Jongdae’s face turns into undoubted exhilaration. The reason why is unclear until Baekhyun is hiking his way out of camp and hears him unabashedly shout “Yixing, where’s the lube?” at the top of his lungs.

He scoffs, displeased until Yeol copies him and leaves him grinning.

Together, they wander the natural paths of the rainforest, dodging vines and tree roots that block their way. Or, at least Baekhyun does. Yeol sees each vine as an opportunity to throw himself through the air and heroically swing forwards several paces, giving Baekhyun the chance to ogle at his toned muscles in action, and yes, they are _very_ nice indeed. Agile and deft, Yeol never slips or stumbles over his own feet, not even when he grabs Baekhyun by the waist and pulls him along for a swing too. Baekhyun screams the entire time, cool rainforest air diffusing around his face and making his mouth dry out. They’re not even off the ground for long, only seven incredibly long seconds, yet Baekhyun is still horrendously disorientated when Yeol puts him down.

“Well, that was… that was…” Flustered, he scrambles helplessly for words, rubbing his hands over his face and trying to ignore the queasiness that has settled in his stomach. “An experience.”

Yeol laughs at him, not mocking, just amused, and out of nowhere takes his hand to walk with him instead. With the terrain growing more and more unpredictable the further they walk, Baekhyun finds Yeol’s sturdy grip on him a great comfort. It’s firm but not too tight, and it guides him safely over dips and dents in the forest floor. Only once does he let go, when the ground comes to an abrupt stop by a drop over a metre high. With finesse, Yeol eases himself down and turns back, taking Baekhyun by the waist and lowering him at a pace probably much too slow to be considered normal. Yeol just stares at him, Baekhyun holding onto his own breath without realising. The moment is so unexpected and intimate that Baekhyun’s not even sure what to think, and can’t find it in himself to look away even when his boots have made contact with the ground.

“Thank you,” he breathes, still a little lost.

He gets a small smile in response, Yeol’s eyes still determined and intent. “You’re welcome.”

The return of pleasantries makes Baekhyun dizzy. Yeol is picking up more and more of their language as the days go on, surprisingly easily too. It makes him question how long he has been here for, for he must have had some civilised life in his early years to be able to perceive things the way he does.

When they finally let each other go, Yeol’s hands coming off his waist and his hands leaving Yeol’s shoulders, the latter offers Baekhyun his arm instead of holding his hand. Touching his bare skin makes Baekhyun’s fingertips erupt in tingles, though he tries to contain himself, sneakily linking arms with Yeol so that he gets to feel him for longer. Just because he feels like it, Baekhyun gifts him a thousand smiles and even reaches up to stroke through his hair when the ground is flat enough and he’s not worried about losing his step, enjoying his company much more than he would Jongdae and Yixing’s if he were still back at camp. By the time they make it to a river bank lined with mangrove trees, Baekhyun is perspiring lightly and a little out of breath, finding the murky brown water that peeks through the trees at him to be strangely inviting.

“What do we have here?” he breathes in awe, peering through the trunks to look out across the rings and ripples, a reflection of the canopy mirrored on the rivers surface. Mildly irritated because he doesn’t know what river this is, Baekhyun slips out of one of his backpack loops and unzips the small pocket at the front, reaching for his manual so he can find out. He’s hastily flipping through the pages when he hears a loud _splosh_ , and briefly glances up to realise that Yeol is no longer standing beside him, but bobbing up and down in the water.

“Hey—wait—is it safe to do that?” he immediately calls out, worry pulling at his stomach. “Y-Yeol, is it safe to be in there? Aren’t there crocodiles?” Of course, Yeol has no idea what he’s saying. After whipping his long, wet hair around and out of his face, he shoots Baekhyun a blinding, teeth-rich smile and comes paddling back to the bank. He props his elbows up on some tree roots and beckons Baekhyun over with an eager wave of the hand, tiny drops of water glistening on his tanned skin.

“Baekhyun,” Yeol exclaims, egging him over again with the same hand motion. “Baekhyun, here.”

As always, the sound of his name on Yeol’s tongue leaves Baekhyun with a tingling in his gut, and he finds himself mindlessly complying to his wishes. He abandons his desire to know what river it is as quickly as it had come, stuffing his manual back into his rucksack and dropping the whole thing to the floor. If Yeol is safe to go in the river, so is he; and it’s not like Yeol would lead him into danger, is it?

Then, Baekhyun realises that he should probably take his clothes off, embarrassment reigning. Nevertheless, Yeol has been pretty much naked this entire time, what’s there to be shy about when they’re this close already?

Thankfully, when he starts to unbutton his shirt and remove his vest, Yeol goes back to splashing about in the water as opposed to watching him like a hawk, making the whole ordeal a little less awkward. His boots, socks and shorts go next, until he’s stood in nothing but his boxers with his things gathered around his feet. To make the most of the situation, he decides to grab his organic soap and use the river as a large bath, tucking it into the waistband of his underwear before he braves traipsing over the tree roots lining the water, wincing when they dig into the arches of his feet. Yeol comes up to meet him halfway in a heartbeat, helping him down by guiding him into a crouch and having him wrap his arms around his neck. Cool water starts to lap its way up Baekhyun’s body and goosebumps flourish across his skin, both from that and Yeol’s naked chest grazing against his own.

Once Yeol has let him go, he starts to tread water to stay afloat, gazing around at his surroundings with his mouth hanging open. “It sure is beautiful here,” Baekhyun sighs in wonder, watching the canopy spin as he twirls in the water. “Wish I had a camera,” he chuckles to himself, bringing his line of sight down to meet eyes with Yeol who’s floating like a starfish. When he catches him looking, Yeol comes bounding over and starts to swim circles around him, the great beam on his face expressing his enjoyment at Baekhyun’s wild laughter, the botanist trying to deflect all the water aimed for his face with the palms of his hands.

Eventually, Yeol stops splashing, coming to a halt behind him and resting his chin on Baekhyun’s shoulder. It is then that Baekhyun has chance to look further down the river, and notices a troop of gorillas scattered along the opposite bank. A few infants splash in the shallows, playing rather than washing, as they have no need for water when they groom themselves to keep clean.

He startles when a few of the babies seem to notice Yeol and start calling for him, noises indiscernible save for the excited undertones. Directly beside his ear, Yeol happily shouts back, making Baekhyun flinch at both the volume and the inhuman sounds, yet he doesn’t make a move to go over; he stays rooted by Baekhyun’s side, chin persisting on his shoulder, vibrations cascading down Baekhyun’s arm when Yeol starts to laugh.

It attracts the attention of the other gorillas, and Baekhyun’s soft, fond smile starts to melt away when they turn to look at him. Even though he cannot see them clearly, much less understand what they’re saying to one another, he somehow knows that they don’t like his presence. They seem to stiffen, infants brought back to their mother’s sides next, and soon they start to filter away in dregs, like the very sight of him repels them.

“Yeol,” he starts nervously, peering around and causing Yeol’s chin to slip from his shoulder. “Is everything alright?” Baekhyun is overcome with guilt when he realises Yeol is staring into the distance, looking just as confused as Baekhyun feels. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that Baekhyun is causing a strain in their relationship, but then Baekhyun supposes that he’s leaving soon – tomorrow, to be exact. All will return to the way it was after he’s gone, even if it seems despairingly sad all of a sudden.

To distract himself from his thoughts, Baekhyun reaches for his soap and decides to busy himself. He does his best to wash his armpits and discreetly wash inside his boxers, and then he takes the soap to his hair and massages it in until white bubbles form and gloop into the water. Yeol is mesmerised, reaching out to touch and then sniff what comes back on his hand. Baekhyun has to stop him from licking it.

“No! No!” he cries, too busy laughing to get the words out right. Yeol’s eyes glint as he beams at him, then splatting his hand on his head and watching enamoured as the foamy soap explodes and breaks into smaller pieces, floating away on the water when gravity pulls them down.

“Here,” Baekhyun smiles gently, squeezing some more soap onto his hand and then treading a little closer. Yeol’s hair is smooth and wet between his fingers, a smile brought to Baekhyun’s face when he finds that a few of his plaits have remained. He’s calmed now, content with just running his hands over Yeol’s scalp and pushing the coal-black strands in different directions. It feels effortless and simple, a moment that Baekhyun wishes would never end.

They start to prune a while later, Baekhyun the first to paddle to the riverbank and haul himself up out of the water on his palms. He waits a little before redressing, limbs still wet as he tries to get them through arm and leg holes, and once he’s done, Yeol is cheerily joining him with a giant smile on his face, a smile that Baekhyun realises never really goes away.

“Eat with us tonight,” Baekhyun says as he wrestles his backpack onto his shoulders. Yeol blinks at him, beaming dumbly, so Baekhyun rephrases. “Food with Baekhyun.”

“Food with Baekhyun?” he asks, apparently surprised before he starts jumping around like an overexcited three-year-old. “Yes! Yes!”

Back at camp, Baekhyun is relieved to find that Yixing and Jongdae are not fornicating – though there is nothing to suggest that they haven’t been. Yixing has a rather suspicious glow about him, one that Jongdae effortlessly seems to emulate. Together, they’re based over the fire preparing their dinner for the final time, thankfully not doing any of the real cooking just yet.

Baekhyun and Yeol are welcomed back with bright smiles – Yixing and Jongdae _definitely_ more laid back than they were this morning – and soon the atmosphere becomes like that of a party. Yixing plays music from his iPod through some Bluetooth speakers while Baekhyun barbeques the meat over the fire. Yeol has decided to decorate all their equipment with the flowers he collected and Jongdae is arranging some kind of banquet table on one of their spare desks, finding all the beer and side dishes that he can.

Baekhyun takes a moment to enjoy the ambience, the tranquillity of nature and the way that his three companions and him seem to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Jongdae tells him that they finished up their work on the Oranda flower while he was away, and a tension in his shoulders that he didn’t know was there suddenly eases.

“Where’s the celebratory champagne?” he asks his friends with a giant grin on his face, sitting back from the fire for a moment and flashing a smile at Yeol who comes bounding over to sit next to him. He begins to sniff Baekhyun’s hair and around his ear, his nose ticklish against Baekhyun’s skin.

“Should be in the cooler.” Jongdae illustrates the location with a point of his finger, and Baekhyun immediately pushes himself up off the tarp to go and fetch it. He is vaguely aware of Yeol clambering after him on his hands and feet, a little like a frog, as he heads inside the gazebo to the cooler, leaning down to open the lid and finding the bottle resting inside. Anticipation makes his fingertips tingle as he reaches down to grab the bottle neck, standing up and feeling a jolt run through his body when he realises something that wasn’t there a moment ago is pressed against his ass.

It takes him a moment to realise that he’s not imagining it, and then another moment to turn around and actually find out what it is. To say he’s appalled to find Yeol there, crouched with his knuckles on the ground and his nose scrunched as if he’s just been sniffing, is an understatement. Baekhyun is positively mortified.

“What the _hell_?!” he squawks shrilly, pushing Yeol away from him with an admonishing slap to the side of the head. His eyes water lightly from sheer embarrassment, the thought that he has just been violated and touched against his will floating through his head before he decides not to dwell on it for the sake of his sanity. But his fiery hurt, anger and shame are all doused in a bucket of icy water when he bears witness to the wounded expression on Yeol’s face. It is utterly heart-breaking, a look that somehow manages to portray that he has just been rejected by the only thing he cares about, and then the look is gone along with the rest of him.

Baekhyun tries to force words from his throat but his lungs have no breath. He watches helplessly as Yeol vaults from the camp and retreats to the mazes of the jungle.

“ _Crap_.” Instantly, he regrets the way he reacted. In retrospect, Yeol’s mentality is like that of a child, for the most part; he didn’t realise – even consider – that he was doing something wrong, and as much as the action itself might be considered rude, so was Baekhyun’s instinctive reaction.

Yixing and Jongdae look up at him in confusion when he starts sprinting in Yeol’s footsteps. In the back of his mind, he is briefly reminded that he is running to where the ravine by their camp is located and finds himself frantic when switching between staring straight ahead for things like cobwebs and glancing down to check that the ground isn’t disappearing. As if things couldn’t get any worse, the sun has already mostly gone down, and the canopy unhelpfully blocks out the rest of the moonlight. It feels like he’s running blind, but he supposes his heart knows where it’s going.

With his eyes fully peeled, he happens, by chance, to catch a glimpse of a hunched figure in the near distance. By process of elimination – and the fact that it looks nothing like a gorilla – his frazzled mind works out that he must be Yeol, and from where he’s currently struggling over the terrain, it looks like he’s sat in mid-air. It’s not until he gets closer that he realises Yeol is actually sat on a large boulder the size of a mammoth, rooted into the ground at the very edge of the drop where it looks out over the ravine.

His urgency rapidly recedes, and Baekhyun finds himself coming to a stop several metres away, finally able to hear the noises of the forest now that his heartbeat has left his ears. Yeol is sitting with his knees hugged into this chest and his head bowed against his arms, almost like he’s wishing the world away. He looks so small and alone, but at least Baekhyun cannot detect any tears from him. Deep inside, Baekhyun feels ashamed of himself for acting the way he did; all he knows is that he’s got to make it right, because the thought of Yeol hating him tears up his insides much more than it probably should.

“Yeol,” he calls out gently after carefully treading closer. Even through the darkness, he sees Yeol stiffen slightly, Baekhyun putting it down to nerves over any grimmer alternatives. Baekhyun wonders if Yeol would understand what the words ‘I’m sorry’ mean, but he says them anyway, loud and clear as he clambers his way up the jagged side of the boulder and onto the askew top.

Very much like an upset dog, Yeol refuses to look at him, even going as far as to turn away when Baekhyun leans over to try and meet his eyes. It is as endearing as it is frustrating, and Baekhyun eventually decides that he needs a different plan of action. Knowing that Yeol would never hurt him, he reaches out for his hand, tenderly removing it from where it clasps his opposite elbow and bringing it to rest in his lap where he cradles it as if it’s sacred. Yeol still withholds his gaze, but he has ears; even if he might not know what Baekhyun’s saying, he should still be able to hear the emotion behind it.

“Yeol, I… I’m so sorry,” Baekhyun begins, honest and sincere with a pleading look in his eyes – a look that Yeol might just see for a millisecond when his defence cracks slightly and his eyes flicker over. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, I have no excuse for it. You just… You took me by surprise, that’s all, and—I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking right and all that. It was a mistake. I swear I’ll never do it again. I never want to hurt you, you know.”

Yeol releases a lamenting sigh, once that makes his whole body rise and fall, and finally brings his head up from his arms. He may only be looking straight ahead now, but it’s an improvement: Baekhyun will be in his peripheral.

“Please forgive me, Yeol,” Baekhyun croons again, taking one of his hands and starting to thread it through Yeol’s long, dark hair. He wonders what other behaviour he should do to show his integrity, and settles for puckering his lips and making small kissing noises to show his affection. He tries to imitate some gorilla sounds as well, and after a few small _hoots_ , Yeol turns to look at him. His expressionate eyes blink wide, gleaming in the darkness as he watches Baekhyun both curiously and warily. The latter shuffles closer and coos louder, continuing to smack his lips lightly as it all seems to be working. A little too well, one might argue, when suddenly Yeol is right up in his face and making the same mouth movements back at him.

They’re barely an inch apart, Yeol’s firm hands coming to stroke both sides of his head as if he’s petting him, emitting small humming sounds from the back of his throat. His eyes are so intense that Baekhyun is a prisoner to their stare, the whole world – the rushing of the nearby waterfalls, the buzzing of the insects, the trumpeting of a herd of elephants – fading away into the background without so much as a second thought.

“Does—Does this mean you forgive me?” Baekhyun whispers, his question prompting Yeol to sniff him as he starts to pick apart his hair. His head tilts to the side, eyes dropping from Baekhyun’s eyes to his relaxed mouth with an intent foreign to him. “Yeol?” Baekhyun tries again, knowing full well that he can answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to his question, but instead Yeol just sniffs him again, nosing at his jaw, his neck, even kneeling up to sniff the top of his head where his hands play with his hair. Baekhyun lets him, docile under his supervision, and blinks innocently at him when Yeol comes to sniff from his temple to his cheek. On impulse, his lips part and his eyes fall half-closed, and somehow, he effortlessly glides into the kiss Yeol initiates.

His lips are the softest thing Baekhyun has ever touched, and the way Yeol supports his head so warmly has goosebumps running down his arms. When a shiver runs down his spine, Baekhyun finds himself leaning closer, pressing into the unexpected kiss with a surprising fervour that he didn’t know he was capable of.

In that moment, rational thoughts like _why am I kissing a monkey man?_ and _what happens when I go home in the morning?_ don’t cross Baekhyun’s mind. All he can think about it how much he has come to like him, and how much he doesn’t want to say goodbye. This place, it’s aura, is just as much a part of him now as Yeol is. He doesn’t want to let it go. Not for anything.

The kiss could last forever, Baekhyun honestly wouldn’t mind, but they’re interrupted when a cry breaks through the night.

“ _Baekhyun_!”

Baekhyun pulls back instantly, though still in some sort of a daze revolving around what just happened. He gazes into Yeol’s eyes, vulnerable and scared, only to see the giant smile he’s missed so much. Just when he starts to return it, someone – Jongdae – shouts again.

“ _Baekhyun_!”

He gasps, brain finally registering that his friends are after him and don’t sound to be in a joking mood. Still afraid that he might upset Yeol, he grabs his hand to show that he’s not rejecting him a second time or abandoning him on his boulder, and hurriedly pulls him along for the ride as he races back to camp.

Even though his friends have shouted him, most likely for help, Baekhyun cannot hear anything else going on: no loud bangs, no crashes or smashes, not even any animal noises. Have they managed to set fire to something then? Or has all their research been stolen? Oh no! Has that video of Baekhyun chasing Yeol around trying to get his underwear back gone viral on the internet?!

He bursts through the trees, heart racing and expecting the worst, only to find what he thought was an impossibility staring him in the face. The gorillas are back in full force, aggressively growling and slamming their fists into the ground as they close Yixing and Jongdae into a circle by what was to be their dining table, still laid out with all their drinks and side dishes. With Yeol on their side, Baekhyun was sure the gorillas wouldn’t try to do anything like this again, but then he thinks back to earlier when they were in the river and, somehow, things start to make sense.

Yeol’s hand rips from Baekhyun’s own as he charges forwards, putting himself directly between the head gorilla and where Jongdae is haphazardly waving his gun around to try and fend them off. Yixing persuades him to drop it when Yeol starts to converse with the head gorilla – the largest of the troop that looms down ominously even over him, coarse silver fur running icily along his back, over his rump, and down to his ankles. Baekhyun, so on edge that his legs have turned to jelly, manages to creep a little closer just as Jongdae and Yixing slip between the cracks of the primate circle.

“They came out of nowhere, Baek,” Yixing immediately explains, voice wobbling as he hurries to swipe the tears from his cheeks. He turns back over his shoulder to where Yeol is surrounded, angry grunts going back and forth between more than just him and who Baekhyun presumes is their leader.

“We didn’t think to react because of Yeol, you know, but when they threw your tent across the camp we realised they weren’t here to make friends,” Jongdae finishes, watching anxiously as Yeol barters with his family.

No one in the troop looks pleased. From what Baekhyun can tell, they all seem to be male – as he assumes that the females are back in their nests guarding the infants. That can only mean one thing: they brought their strongest fighters to the ring, intending to attack them when they were none the wiser. Coincidently, they showed up when Yeol wasn’t there, and Baekhyun wonders just what they were planning to do. The darkest odds is that they came to kill them, and when Yeol would discover their mangled, bloodied bodies, they would have blamed it on something else, another creature capable of bringing the brutal end with equal force. People always say that apes are intelligent beings, but they never said they were cunning.

The head gorilla roars, rising up on his hind legs by what looks to be left of Baekhyun’s tent and beating his knuckles against his chest. With his bottom jaw pulled back and their solar-powered lights illuminating their features, Baekhyun has a clear sight of his monstrous teeth, four sharp fangs breaking up the lines of thick, sturdy molars for crushing the barks of trees. Crunching through human bones would probably be easy for them too, Baekhyun imagines, and then wishes that he hadn’t. Yeol is also a human, though sometimes it feels like he isn’t, and only now, when it seems the hand of power is slowly turning away from him, does Baekhyun realise that Yeol is in danger. The gorilla he debates with stamps and _hmph_ s in agitation as he tries to reason with him, the silverback marching back and forth while shaking his head to show just how much he disagrees with whatever he’s saying. As the leader, the other gorillas rally behind him; when he shouts up in a giant growl, one that could rival the thunderous roar of a lion or tiger, mixed in with the shrill screams of a monkey, they join in to show their support. Yeol is losing.

The mighty silverback snaps and snarls consistently, delivering a speech that Baekhyun cannot understand but one that has Yeol appearing hurt and despondent. He watches as the head gorilla throws his beefy arms in the air and then lunges forwards to get right up in Yeol’s face, his elongated head visibly vibrating with the ferocity of the noise that comes out of his mouth. Surprisingly, Yeol holds his ground, but he doesn’t move to talk back.

After that, the final sentence, the gorillas slink away into the puddles of darkness around their camp until they are nothing but a jarring memory behind Baekhyun’s eyelids.

“Do you think they’re coming back?” Jongdae whispers urgently, a protective arm wrapped around Yixing’s waist to keep him close. His eyes move skittishly over to where he dropped his gun.

Baekhyun glumly shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

There is a certain finality to it all – the silverback’s bellows. Like it was a goodbye, or a good riddance, of some sort. He watches Yeol carefully as he clenches and relaxes his fists, absent-mindedly toeing at the ground as if hiding the imprints of his old leader’s foot. “Yeol?” Baekhyun timidly calls out, not really knowing what kind of response he’ll get, if any. Yeol might not even want to talk to him. There’s no denying that he caused this – the tension, the arguments, and what looks to be a banishing. Baekhyun wouldn’t blame him for hating him either. But “Yeol was king” are the words that come back to him, tearing a gasp from this throat. He finds his legs bringing him nearer, and Yeol’s teary eyes glimmer in the artificial light.

“Yeol was king,” he says again, voice thick and nasally. “Yeol king no more. No home now.”

“Oh,” is the only thing that comes out of Baekhyun’s mouth, then he reaches out to embrace him, breathing in the scent of his organic soap on the column of his neck. “Don’t you worry about it, hmm?” he finds his voice a minute or two later, stroking through Yeol’s hair and smiling fondly when he feels a plait. “Yeol’s going to be just fine, with Baekhyun. Home with Baekhyun now.”

Yeol whines lowly and hugs him tightly in return, and Baekhyun knows he’s understood.

*

“Come on! Come out! You can’t look that bad!” Baekhyun insists, rubbing his palms together with a giant smile on his face. There’s a giddy feeling in his chest, like it’s been inflated with a bubble of laughing gas, and it has him excitedly twitching where he stands. “Yeol! I’m _waiting_!” he singsongs, chuckling to himself afterwards because it’s honestly been a while since he’s been so inexplicably happy.

He bites his lip in anticipation when the zip to the last surviving gazebo door starts moving – the others packed away in their trunks, courtesy of Yixing and Jongdae. Baekhyun’s eyes light up as the canvas goes floppy and reveals a leg, then a hip, and an arm, and a _Yeol_. Naturally, he squeals with excitement, and then falls about laughing. Just as expected, his clothes are much too small on Yeol’s body, but Baekhyun had never imagined it to look _that_ funny.

“Oh _wow_!” he cries, struggling for breath when he sees the grimace planted on Yeol’s features. “You look—You look—great!” Yeol doesn’t seem to agree with him, but that just makes it all the more hilarious. He’s squeezed into a set of Baekhyun’s spare clothes after it was decided he would be the best fit, the shirt not really buttoning over his broad chest and the shorts only just managing to get over his hips with the fly down. Apparently, the only thing that fits properly is the socks. He stands a little like a penguin, as if even his joints have been squished, and he looks so uncomfortable that Baekhyun decides he shouldn’t relish in his suffering any longer.

“Come here,” he smiles knowingly, “let me help a little.” Jongdae and Yixing snigger in the background, remarking something about how he looks even worse than when Jongdae dressed up as his sister for Halloween.

With some effort, Baekhyun finally has the fly zipped and the button done at the top, Yeol wincing and grabbing at his crotch as a result. He also decides Yeol can leave the shirt open, as the vest underneath doesn’t seem to be too bad of a fit; as people always say, comfort over style.

“There we go!” he chirps cheerily. “That’s not so bad now, is it?” Just because Baekhyun’s grinning, Yeol grins back, and it makes his heart stammer in his chest. “Yeol is handsome,” he quietly reminds, blushing when Yeol makes the kissy face at him again.

“Ah, Baekhyun! What a wonderful job you’ve done! He looks like a true botanist now!” Jongdae caws, followed by the sound of a camera shutter.

Baekhyun only rolls his eyes and smiles up at Yeol with a strange tingling in his fingertips. He definitely isn’t what Baekhyun usually pictures when he conjures his ideal man, and in truth, Yeol isn’t really all that conventional either; most of the time, he doesn’t understand what Baekhyun’s saying, and he sniffs his bum without asking, leading to misunderstandings that cause them both to get hurt. And maybe he’ll never be the type to wear a smart shirt or a pair of work trousers (the manbun is a reality though, and _damn_ does he look good with it), but for now, in some crazy, indecipherable, unconceivable way, he’s sort of perfect. Just a little bit.

“Come on, you two! Our driver should be at the meeting point now,” says Yixing, locking up the last of the trunks with chunky padlocks and tilting them up onto their wheels, one in each hand.

“You better not have gotten us lost, Byun Baekhyun.” Jongdae puts on a grave voice, trying to pull off a movie-worthy smoulder that makes him look like he’s sucking on a lemon instead.

Baekhyun huffs, indignant. “Honestly! You have so little faith in me! I know _exactly_ where we are!” he insists with a smile so wide it bruises his cheeks. “Come on, then. It’s this way!”

“Home with Baekhyun?” Yeol intercepts, sounding nervous albeit undoubtedly cute.

Enamoured, Baekhyun slowly nods his head. “Home with Baekhyun,” he repeats for extra measure, pure joy reflecting back on him.

And so, Baekhyun takes Yeol’s hand in his, makes the infamous kissy face to a giggly reception, and leads him bravely into a whole new world.

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**Author's Note:**

> **Please note that I do not want constructive criticism. Please do not share negative opinions or thoughts about this story in the comments, in bookmarks or on Twitter. Thank you :)**


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